Tasmania fast tracks Bell Bay wind project as it heads for federal review

The Tasmanian government has fast tracked the 224 megawatt (MW) Bell Bay wind farm by giving it major project status, accelerating the state process just as the project enters the federal approval system.

The $950 million proposal by Equis is in the Northeast Tasmanian Renewable Energy Zone (REZ) and will include up to 224MW of wind power and a four hour, 100 MW battery. 

The current plan is to install what would be the largest wind turbines yet in Australia: 28 machines with a capacity of 8 MW each and a tip height of 270m. 

Tasmania planning minister Felix Ellis has declared the wind farm a major project, in a development that was gazetted on Friday. 

On Monday, the project was also interred into the EPBC process, the federal system requiring developments that could harm threatened or endangered species to get ministerial approval. 

Potential impacts on wedge-tail eagles, quolls, the extremely endangered Swift Parrot and a range of frogs are among the flora and fauna impacts the wind farm will need to address.

But, as the EPBC application sadly notes, in the case of the Swift Parrot the species is now so rare that there is a “lack of appropriate, recent, and relevant information” on whether they are likely to collide with wind towers or breed nearby. 

The Bell Bay planners might take heart from a recent nod to Ark Energy’s 300 MW St Patricks Plains Wind Farm in the central highlands of Tasmania.

It got through the local development approval process by promising to shut down turbines when eagles are detected in the vicinity.

Equis Wind Australia anticipates the project could be commissioned by late 2028 or 2029, or within 2 years of construction starting.

Bell Bay is part of a portfolio of Equis’ Australian projects that includes nearly 2 GW of wind projects across the NEM and five big battery storage projects spread across another four states.

What the wind farm has in its favour is a $70 million federal investment by Labor in the nearby Bell Bay Hydrogen Hub, which is 8km to the south of the proposed project and a detail that Equis is promoting. 

The Tasmanian government is kicking in a portion of the remaining $230 million that needs to be sunk into the hub to make it viable. 

The Bell Bay Hydrogen Hub is expected to be operational by 2028 and to produce 45,000 tonnes of green hydrogen a year from that date – a task that will require a lot of renewable energy.

Bell Bay is an industrial precinct that hosts an aluminium smelter owned by Rio Tinto. 

It has long been the focus of the Tasmanian government’s renewable hydrogen production and export plans, thanks to its location next to a deep water port and its access to the state’s majority renewables electricity supply.

Bell Bay has been on the radar of the likes of Fortescue, Woodside, Origin and even Spanish energy giant Iberdrola, but government funding and MoUs haven’t translated yet to a functioning green hydrogen hub.

The federal and state funding promise was an attempt to re-start the location’s green hydrogen plans.